


Something that never happened ... Or did it?

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Hermione Granger(implied), But no actual drowning, Day At The Beach, Giving up in the face of drowning, Jewish Hermione Granger, Time Travel, Young Hermione Granger, Young Tom Riddle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29642301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Young Hermione travels back in time and meets young Tom Riddle.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Tom Riddle
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19
Collections: Tag(line) You're It! Competition





	Something that never happened ... Or did it?

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [Tagline_Youre_It_Comp_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Tagline_Youre_It_Comp_2020) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> "Two friends that didn't know they were supposed to be enemies."(The Fox and the Hound)
> 
> (My first work in English, please be nice.)

_The first time he saw her she was five._

He was hidden inside the cave he found a year ago after some of the older kids decided that he had shown too much cheek the evening prior and that he had to be punished.  
He had found this cave after stumbling over a little stone that lay in his way. The perspective provided from laying in the sand showed him an opening in the rock formation that normally wasn’t visible when the flood was in.

* * *

_The first time she met him he was six._

She was visiting this particular beach for the first time ever and was too excited to wait for her parents before dashing into the water. She had recently learned to swim and felt save enough to face the water.

She was wrong.

* * *

It was only pure luck that had her waking up inside a cave, gasping for air.  
When trying to find a way out she followed the light that glared at her through a big crack in the stone.  
When she finally stood outside all the water was gone. She of course knew what that meant, her parents had informed her of the tides, how they worked and how it took a few hours for them to switch.  
It meant she had to have been in this cave for hours even though the sun was not much further down then when she went in.

She almost screamed when she heard a voice from behind her.

“Who are you?.”

She turned around as fast as she could. She considered not telling him, since her parents were always big on her not talking to strangers without them present but surely they couldn’t mean kids her age with that.

“My name is Hermione, and yours?”

“I’m Tom. How did you get in there? I’ve been here for hours and I didn’t see anyone enter this cave in at least the last hour. And I should know.”

She was a bit confused at that statement for multiple reasons but she decided not to question it. It wouldn’t help her in her situation anyhow. So she decided to answer with another question instead.

“Have you seen my parents? My dad is really tall and my mom has the same hair as mine.”

That statement wasn’t actually helpful, since her hair was wet and far from the normal volume that she shared with her mom but she didn’t think of that in this second.

“I don’t think so. No one really goes to this part of the beach. I thought we were the only ones here to be honest. It’s not really a popular spot.”

That confused her even more. Sure there weren’t that many people here when she and her parents arrived but surely there had at least been ten different families?  
She decided to voice that particular thought but only received a blank stare in response.

“I can only tell you what I’ve seen and apart from maybe one couple no one was here when we arrived.”

“Who is we?” She wondered when he kept mentioning that mysterious ‘we’.

“The orphanage of course! We come here every year. It’s been tradition since 1920, so basically since the war ended.”

He sounded like he was repeating information he had been told many times. But it made her wonder what they had done during the second war. They couldn’t have kept on coming here during active warfare for sure?!

Her parents had only let her know about the war a few months ago after she asked them about their childhood and they had told her of growing up in the shadows of the second world war. Of rationing and repeated children stories that aimed to keep such things from happening again.

_Her dad had never even met his grandparents._

That’s the first time she actually heard of her dads roots. It had always been important to her mum to keep her family‘s culture alive but that wasn’t the case with her dad. She hadn’t even heard of Hanukkah before asking her kindergarten teacher about it. That‘s all her teacher was comfortable sharing with her when she asked about what ‚being Jewish‘ meant.

She was ripped out of her thoughts when the boy repeated his earlier question:

“So how did you get in there?“

She didn’t know. She told him as much.

“I went in the water and when I woke up I was lying in there“, she shrugged a little bit helplessly, “I didn’t even know there was a cave here.”.

“Well, I would prefer if you could leave then. I knew this place first. So it’s mine to use.”

She was a bit worried about his logic there. Growing up she was always encouraged to share her stuff with others and this case didn’t really constitute her as ‘his’ anyways. Finding something first didn’t give you any claim to it. But she decided not to push that notion. It wouldn’t help to antagonise him. That’s when an even more worrying thought struck her.

“What day is it today?”

He looked at he weirdly. “It’s Wednesday, why?”

That could not be right. It had been Saturday when she and her parents started their journey to the beach and even if she had somehow managed to be unconscious for longer than a few hours there was no way she had been lying in that cave for multiple days. She would’ve been way more hungry and most likely dead after not drinking anything for so long.  
And there was no way her parents wouldn’t have found her til then. The cave might be relatively well concealed when all the water was in but not during low tide. At least not for her parents.

“What date is it?!”

“It’s the 31st of July, 1933.” He gave her an incredulous stare. As if she should know that.

She should’ve known that. If this was her time at all.

“That can’t be right! When I woke up this morning it was the 31st of July 1985!”

He now seemed more intrigued than anything else. Wondering if she had really traveled through time most likely.

She had to get back. Back to her parents. Back to a holiday that had started perfectly normal. Just back home.

“So are you saying that you time traveled here? Did you have a time machine?” He was positively glowing with curiosity and she wished that she could answer his questions in a more satisfying manner. But no can do.

So she tried to explain that to him. What had happened to her and how she woke up in that cave. How she was so so excited to swim in the ocean for the first time ever and how she lost control in the water. How she was gasping for air but couldn’t keep up the fight. How the water was drawing her away from shore. How she eventually gave up to let the water consume her just to wake up in that cave.

“Do you think the cave is a portal? Maybe it lead you here so that you wouldn’t die and now that you’re fine you can just go back and walk out in your time?” He got less and less enthusiastic as he went on.

That gave her hope though. “You think so?”

“Well it wouldn’t hurt to try. But I don’t think you could come back if you leave this time.”

“Why?”

“It just doesn’t work like that. It never does in the books.”

She was interested to hear more about these books. None of the other kids at kindergarten could read and most of them were not interested in anything complicated enough to grab her interest. Just the typical knight saves helpless princess from scary dragon that kidnapped her from her tower. That was interesting when she was three but she had started to read on her own shortly after she turned four and now that she was almost six she had progressed to more intricate stories.  
Maybe he could match her.

Maybe he could be a friend.

She really wanted to have a friend. But now was hardly the time to make a friend. If she couldn’t get back home she might have to revise that.

But it couldn’t hurt to ask.

“In case I can’t go back, will you be my friend? It’s just, I never really had a friend before and..”

She didn’t get to finished before he replied with an enthusiastic  
“YES!”.

So she went into the cave.

She kept her eyes closed even when she could see lights behind her closed eyelids. She did open her eyes when she suddenly felt water at her feet.  
The water reached up to her knees. And it made sense that during high tide the water would actually be inside the cave as well. She didn’t quite want to leave yet, not wanting to forget about her first friend that she probably would never see again.

Later her parents found her. They had alerted the lifeguard as soon as they realised that they couldn’t see their little girl anymore. It still took them a couple hours to find her but in the end everything was fine.

Hermione never knew that the little boy really existed. Her parents had chalked her tales of traveling through time up to be a fever dream and she hadn’t questioned them. Even during her third year when she routinely traveled through time to fulfil her course load it didn’t appear to her that it really could have happened like that. As far as she knew she never saw that little boy again.

* * *

  
_She was wrong._


End file.
